Government Data Done Well and the Digital Agenda for Europe

Last October, the European Commission invited to an unlikely unconference: What ideas did the larger community have that would help to drive the Digital Agenda for Europe forward?

One idea that came out of that meeting (backed, at the time, by W3C and our colleagues down the road at ETSI): Government Data Done Well. Could we join forces between the Digital Agenda's focus on the use of public sector information as an economic driver on the one hand, and between the Open Data movement's interests in openness and transparency on the other? And how would all of that translate into technology and standards? Can we drive Europe's vision of Government data towards the full five stars?

Over the past few months, an impressive set of partners has come together within the Share-PSI initiative, and we're now on the final stretch toward the Digital Agenda Assembly:

• We have a Call for Participation out for a workshop on 10/11 May 2011. The workshop will be hosted by the European Commission in Brussels. We're going to look at the interoperability story for Public Sector Information, broadly: What are the use cases? What are the obstacles that get into the way as public administrations try to put data online? We're asking that question both from a technical perspective and a legal angle. Position papers due 15 April!
• As of today, the Open Data Challenge is on. The panel of judges includes W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee and EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Prices and awards of a total of EUR 20,000 are sponsored by various partners across industry: For ideas, for apps, for visualizations, and for public sector data sets. Of particular note, the Talis award for best use of Linked Data. Get your submissions ready!

All of this will feed into the Commission-organized Digital Agenda Assembly in June. We hope that we'll have a great story to tell there, about the value of standards and the Web, about open data, and about the great applications that will come out of the Open Data Challenge.